How To Tell You’re Living In The Wrong Country

Yesterday, Kentucky senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA in Nashville after refusing to be fondled by the airport agents.

Paul has been a vocal enemy of the TSA, blasting the agency last year after agents conducted an invasive search of a 6-year old girl despite her parents’ objections. TSA Director John Pistole suggested that, because a young child in Afghanistan is capable of detonating a roadside bomb, all children should be considered potential threats.

Paul raised the issue again yesterday in an opinion piece. As usual, the Obama administration closed ranks around the TSA yesterday, defending the agency and insisting that “we take necessary actions to ensure that air travel is safe.” Such as treating 6-year old girls like criminal terrorists.

Air travel is never going to be safe. We’re talking about a 500,000 pound flying building crammed with hundreds of strangers criss-crossing the skies nearly 100,000 times in a single day. There’s a lot of room for things to go wrong.

Criminalizing travel, which is the effective net result of the current passenger screening process, has minimal impact on weeding out the boogeyman. There are so many holes in the TSA procedures– medication, baby formula, pilot exceptions. Not to mention a whole world of softer targets. Who needs airplanes when you have shopping malls?